Molly O'Keefe - The Temptation of Savannah O'Neill

Vanessa had been last seen two weeks ago in New Orleans. Matt knew this because he’d hired an investigator to track down everyone related to the jewel theft that his father had been involved in seven years ago.

His investigator had taken her picture, followed her around to various poker games and bars, and heard her talking about Bonne Terre and the Manor. Then she’d vanished. Just vanished.

Matt connected the dots and decided to come here to find her. Or wait for her. Whatever it took to correct justice’s aim.

It’s not like he had anything else to do.

So, his plan, if you could call it that, was to see if Vanessa was here. And if she wasn’t, he was going to find a reason to wait until she showed up. Or better yet, find out where she was.

“Yeah,” he muttered to Savannah’s photo. “Not my best work.”

Six months ago his life was torn apart, and now he was talking to photos as if they might reply and stalking the O’Neill women to seek retribution for a seven-year-old crime.

“Justice,” he said to the photo, tasting the word, loving how it gave him a purpose. A fire.

But not a plan.

“What am I supposed to do with you?” he asked the photo.

He could knock on the door and…what? He considered Savannah’s smile, the radiance that poured from her eyes. She was like sun off of glass, she just seemed to shimmer.

Was he going to threaten her? Interrogate her? Tie her up while he waited for her mother to arrive? And then hope that the mother just happened to be traveling with a fortune in stolen gems?

Had he come to that? Really?

“Great, Woods,” Matt said, rubbing his hands over his face. “Sherlock Holmes, you are not.”

Suddenly, he had a memory of sitting outside an Indian reservation casino. He must have been about eight or nine, and his father was going in for one quick game. One hand. Just one.

He told Matt that his job was to sit in the car and watch for three men. One man with a patch, another with a scar and the final man with a one of those Russian bearskin hats. When Matt saw those three men he needed to run inside the casino and find Joel.

Clever, Matt realized now, twenty-five years later. Because while men with scars and patches were a possibility in South Carolina, there would be no bearskin hats.

A goose chase. A fool’s errand, his father was brilliant with them. A master. And Matt had taken his job so seriously he’d sat in that beat-up Chevy with a notebook and pen, drawing pictures and taking notes, a young Sherlock Holmes. Always keen. Always on the lookout for a bearskin hat that would never come.

All of which was irrelevant. Every moment of the past, every bad decision and terrible accident that led him to this point, was moot.

The only thing that mattered now was making one thing right, in a life gone horribly wrong. He had to make one damn thing right. Who betrayed Dad? Joel’s partner, Richard Bonavie, or the blonde at the drop-off—Vanessa O’Neill?

The legal system might have gotten it wrong with Matt, whose hands were bloody right down to the bone, but it wasn’t too late to get justice for his father. That’s why he was here, and the women inside that house were the key to it all.

He angled the rearview mirror and checked his reflection—a little closer to potential ax murderer than was entirely necessary, but there wasn’t much he could do. He forgot a razor.

The scruff of his beard rasped under his hands and he thought about all his clients, hiring the cool and slick Matt Woods to design their summer homes, their art galleries and condos.

That guy doesn’t live here anymore, he thought, unable to recognize himself in the green eyes that stared back.

Matt threw open the door of his rented car and slammed it behind him. What he lacked in plans he was going to make up for in bravado. Some righteous “where the hell is your mother?”

Smooth. Oh, so smooth.

The bayou around him seemed to pulse and breathe. It was warmer than St. Louis, denser, the air thick and somehow both sweet and spicy. Like flowers dipped in cayenne.

He liked it. It made him hungry for food and a woman at the same time.

The house, he assessed with an knowledgeable eye, was an aging stunner. It sat alone on the road, about a mile and a half from town, surrounded by a few acres of wilderness. She was a grand dame falling on hard times—the black trim was peeling and a few of the white hurricane shutters were missing slats. But the bones of the house were solid. Elegant. Built to withstand the Southern weather, and to look good doing it.

He imagined the windows lit with candles and the sound of music and ice in crystal tumblers spilling from the open front door.

The front door was freshly, brazenly painted scarlet.

Matt believed doors could be sexy. He believed windows and wood and concrete could be erotic. But nothing he’d ever seen quite matched the sexual statement of that red door.

It looked like the house of an aging mistress, an expensive woman of slightly ill repute, which would be Margot’s influence. But he didn’t know how Savannah the librarian fit in.

He stepped up the river-stone path, the rocks sliding under his old work boots. He’d packed work clothes, denim and rawhide, because the expensive suits, silk ties and Italian leather in his closet were beginning to mock him.

He got one foot onto the wide steps of the sweeping veranda and the scarlet door creaked open.

Margot O’Neill, he knew from the surveillance photo in the car. She stood in the doorway, the black of the hall behind her making her fair beauty more pronounced. More breathtaking, despite her years.

She was medium height and trim, with posture like a steel beam. She wore bright blue and the fabric looked rich and thin—like liquid had been poured over her.

It was no wonder men paid to have her. She was that beautiful. That rare.

And then she smiled, like she knew it.

“You’re coming about the ad?” she asked, her voice rich with years of the South.

Ad? Damn not having a plan. She tilted her head, her blue eyes losing some of their hospitality, and he knew he was moments from being kicked off the property.

“Yes,” he finally said, taking yet another leap into the unknown. “I am. I’m here about the ad.”

Good God, he hoped he wasn’t about to be Margot’s boy toy. Though there could be worse things, he speculated, catching the gleam in her eye.

“Margot, are you—” The door opened farther and a blonde goddess stood in the dark hallway. Matt’s heart stopped dead in his chest.

It was Savannah, from the photograph.

Sort of.

The beauty was there, the perfect skin, bright blue eyes and shiny sweep of hair. But that was where the similarities ended. The real-life Savannah was somehow sharper, her radiance hard and refined to an edge. Her cheekbones alone could cut through tin.

She was razor wire next to Margot’s magnolia.

There was no sunny warmth. No shimmer. This woman was a stranger to him. He knew this was ridiculous—picture or no, she was still a stranger to him. But the loss was there nonetheless. He didn’t realize how much he was looking forward to basking in that warm glow—until that glow was buried under ice.

She was, however, painfully sexy in a long straight gray skirt and a white shirt that couldn’t quite diminish the curves she clearly was trying to hide. The whole look gave her the appearance of a prison warden on lockdown.

In a porno.

And, he realized, aside from sexy she was also a dead ringer for the surveillance picture he had of Vanessa in New Orleans. Right down to the eyes, which were guarded. Wary. Hiding something.

He lost his companion, that fantasy woman, but he gained something else. Something better. Something righteous.